Business Growth Strategies For CEOs: Top CMOs On Marketing Strategy Implementations

Unifying Revenue Teams: How a Fractional CRO Drives Cross-Functional Success

Tue, Dec 17, 2024 | Posted by Howard Doherty

For mid-market CEOs navigating growth, aligning sales, marketing, and customer success can feel like herding cats. As these teams expand, they often develop siloed processes that hinder efficiency and impact the bottom line. A fractional chief revenue officer (CRO) offers a cost-effective solution to this challenge, bringing executive-level expertise to unite revenue functions without the full-time price tag.

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Your Sales and Marketing Pros Are At Odds – Here’s How to Get Them Aligned

Thu, Dec 3, 2020 — Since the era of cavemen, the roles of Sales and Marketing professionals have been fairly well defined. The earliest marketers would create awareness for that remarkable new invention, the wheel; and the salespeople would roll it down the streets, sharing the features and benefits to interested customers, then collect five dodo-birds in compensation. In the million years since, Sales and Marketing departments still have a similarly symbiotic existence -- but a lot seems to have changed in the digital era. Today, the gap between Sales and Marketing represents a gray area at most companies — from the smallest distributors, to the largest multinational enterprises.

The Marketing & Sales Accelerator

Thu, Aug 27, 2020 — 3 Steps for Achieving Greater Sales Co-authored by John Baglivo and Alan Landau A well-functioning partnership between Marketing and Sales is critical to the growth of any business. But how do you get there and ensure that your efforts are coordinated and that investments in these areas are as efficient and effective as possible? This question is more important than ever as you look to accelerate growth in a challenging market where the margin for error is slim. Unfortunately, misconceptions, misunderstanding and mistrust often get in the way of a collaborative relationship.

Find New Markets and Shift Your Focus -- At Least Temporarily

Wed, Jul 22, 2020 — Part 8 of the series: A B2B CEO’s Guide to Navigating the COVID-19 Revenue Reality The COVID-19 pandemic undoubtedly has created an economic crisis that has left few businesses untouched. But, if you have been following this blog series, you understand the value of innovation, and, in particular, the value that your aligned sales and marketing leaders will bring to that strategic exploration. Now is the time to entrust your collective team to the task of identifying new opportunities. Borne out of necessity in a world of shelter-at-home mandates, so many new creative ideas have emerged. If your market-facing teams really understand your core competencies, they will find creative ways to apply those core competencies in a unique and innovative fashion to solve today’s challenges.

What You Should Do About “The 80%”

Wed, Jul 8, 2020 — Co-Authored by Kimberly Miller, CMO, Chief Outsiders and Chris Dohl, President, The Alias Group The conventional wisdom of the 80/20 rule is that 80% of your company sales come from 20% of your customers. If you believe that, then you might believe that those top 20% of customers would guarantee success. And from an operational standpoint, maybe the 80/20 rule could turn into the 20/80 rule, meaning that those 20% of customers should take up 80% of your sales team’s efforts. Now more than ever, businesses should be appreciative of their entire customer base—not just the top 20%. The 2020 coronavirus lockdown has shown us that diversity in service and product offerings and diversity in clients and prospects helps any business weather the storm.

Compensation Alignment

Mon, Jun 29, 2020 — Part 7 of the series: A B2B CEO’s Guide to Navigating the COVID-19 Revenue Reality Experience has shown that when sales and marketing are aligned in a strong partnership, they deliver more profitable revenue growth. I have seen this theory in action in subscription businesses, advertising businesses, and tech solutions companies, to name a few. And, if you have read all of the blogs to this point, you now have some insights about how to create this powerhouse one-two punch to effectively conquer your marketplace.

Sales Enablement and Support

Tue, Jun 9, 2020 — Part 6 of the series: A B2B CEO’s Guide to Navigating the COVID-19 Revenue Reality Your sales executive likely has a keen sense of what types of sales support materials traditionally have been helpful, and therefore has an opinion about sales support needs from marketing. But times have changed, and the playbook has been torn up. Given the times, the sales team simply can’t say with conviction that they truly understand exactly what sales support tools will help convince buyers to move forward. In our last blog, we talked about partnering between sales and marketing for lead generation and lead management optimization. Let’s explore how sales and marketing can partner to close more sales from those leads.

Lead Generation and Lead Management Across Sales and Marketing

Wed, May 27, 2020 — Part 5 of the series: A B2B CEO’s Guide to Navigating the COVID-19 Revenue Reality Have you ever heard sales blame marketing for bad leads and marketing blame sales for not acting on the leads they give? Those are common complaints from both functions. And there are usually aspects of both sides of the coin that are accurate. In our last blog, you hopefully learned from the examples of two businesses that realigned certain responsibilities in a way that created greater cross-functional accountability for sales.

Marketing and Sales Organization Design For Now and For Later

Tue, May 12, 2020 — Part 4 of the series: A B2B CEO’s Guide to Navigating the COVID-19 Revenue Reality The “way it has always been” is gone for good. It’s time to consider the reality: The world is changed now, and likely will be different once we shake off the effects of the pandemic. But, as we discussed in our last blog, now is not the time to slash and burn headcount without a smart, and reasoned, approach to moving forward.

Short-Term Functional Cost Control Without Sacrificing the Future

Fri, May 8, 2020 — Part 3 of the series: A B2B CEO’s Guide to Navigating the COVID-19 Revenue Reality In an economy roiled by the pandemic, it can be tempting for CEOs to wield a cost-cutting knife—with unrelenting and deep-cutting fervor. Indeed, it’s understandable: For generations, the natural inclination of many B2B CEOs has been to cut marketing when things were tough. In our last blog, we hopefully impressed upon you the importance of viewing both sales and marketing functions as a cohesive team, working as a symbiotic unit to pull sales out of crisis mode.

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